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Federal court
Now it’s final: Animal rights activist Erwin Kessler was allowed to be called an “anti-Semite” with impunity
The president of the “Verein gegen Tierfabriken” (VgT) defended himself against the public designation of “anti-Semite” with dozens of libel suits. So far he has had more success with it. But now the Federal Supreme Court says in a 2015 case: The designation was correct.
Defeat in federal court: Animal rights activist Erwin Kessler during an interview on August 16, 2017 in Frauenfeld.
Erwin Kessler isn’t just a contentious animal rights activist with sharp opinions, especially on the Jewish slaughter. The president of the Verein gegen Tierfabriken is also keeping the judiciary busy. In dozens of cases, Kessler has filed civil lawsuits and criminal charges against private individuals and media workers that brought him closer to hating Jews.
Kessler not only acted against those who wrote that text themselves. Even those who only shared it on Facebook or Twitter always had to wait for an announcement. Often times, the process ends with a criminal warrant conviction. The supposedly fallibles apparently had neither the time nor the strength to defend themselves against Kessler. Or they lacked knowledge and financial means. Kessler regularly celebrated the convictions publicly on his association’s website.
Now, a recent Federal Supreme Court ruling sheds new light on Kessler’s legal successes. The question arises: Were dozens of convictions illegal? It must be assumed.
Open hatred towards the “Jews of Schächt”
Specifically, the Federal Supreme Court had to judge a Facebook post by the Swiss freethinker and activist Valentin Abgottspon from 2015. In it, Abgottspon had linked to a text by a vegan group in which Kessler was described as a “multiple convicted anti-Semite” and his VgT as an “anti-Semitic organization”.
Instead, Kessler and VgT filed a civil lawsuit and a criminal defamation complaint. Even if Abgottspon did not write the text himself, he had behaved in a way that was detrimental to the personality and even punished him by distributing it. Abgottspon surrendered in the civil proceedings for cost reasons. However, he did not accept the criminal conviction and took the case with his lawyer Amr Abdelaziz to the highest court in Lausanne.
Now, and this is groundbreaking in Kessler’s long list of criminal charges, the Federal Supreme Court has ruled: At the time of the crime, Kessler could well be called an “anti-Semite.” This is not defamation. It is true that Kessler was not a “multiple conviction anti-Semite”, but that the federal court convicted him only once in 2000 of “multiple racial discrimination”. Since he himself, however, in an interview with the «St. Galler Tagblatt »spoke of a multiple sentence in 2014, this formulation was also permissible.
But more importantly: even after his conviction, Kessler used negative stereotypes directed against Jews, downplayed the Holocaust, and “openly expressed his hatred of the” Jews of Schächt “whom he described as disparaging. Overall, according to the Supreme Court Federal, Kessler shows a “certain continuity of his convictions.”
Litigation won, yet a lot of money was lost
Valentin Abgottspon has definitely not been guilty of defamation towards Kessler. If this also applies to the VgT he must now be tried again by the High Court of Bern. As it stands, this partial aspect of the case is highly likely to lead to an acquittal.
“Tiring process”:
Valentin Abgottspon
Abgottspon says that the lawsuits filed by Kessler cost him a total of more than 100,000 francs. He had to collect money from close relatives in order to defend himself in court. You will probably keep most of the costs. The matter was very exhausting and exhausting. “If I had known where all this would lead, perhaps I would have recognized the civil suit from the beginning and accepted the sanction order and not have taken on the entire appeal to Lausanne,” Abgottspon says, continuing:
“But I just couldn’t imagine a conviction, with all the anti-Jewish statements by Kessler that were found on the VgT website.”
The trial comes at the right time for Regula Sterchi as well. The activist, also a client of Amr Abdelaziz, had been denounced by Kessler and VgT in the practically identical matter. Unlike the Berner, the Zurich judiciary had recognized that the term “anti-Semitic” could be used in relation to the person Kessler.
After the appeal process has to be repeated due to a formal error, the Zurich High Court will now have to judge whether the charge of “anti-Semitism” is also admissible when applied to the VgT and is not allowed to apply to the VgT . Sterchi can count on good opportunities. She says: “This legal dispute put enormous financial and psychological pressure on me. The same goes for others who have been denounced by Kessler. “
The fundraiser aims to alleviate the financial disaster of the Kessler trials
And what about all those who in comparable cases – as it now turns out: wrongly – have been legally convicted? Attorney Abdelaziz says: “These people are likely to be no longer able to do anything. Many of them were criminally sentenced for making statements and in some cases simply for liking them on Facebook or Twitter and also suffered serious financial damage, although, as we know today, they had done nothing wrong. It is offensive, but I assume that any request for review would be rejected. “
Abgottspon and Sterchi are now trying to at least partially compensate for the financial damage they have suffered from the Kessler lawsuits. You collect through a donation platform, which can be accessed via www.gerechtesanwalt.ch.
The author of this article, like other journalists, has been sued and denounced by Erwin Kessler. Specifically, it was the title of an online article that had aroused Kessler’s disapproval. After several steps in the process, Kessler finally accepted that there was no criminal behavior on the part of the journalist.
